


A Better Man

by quigonejinn



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-14
Updated: 2014-07-14
Packaged: 2018-02-08 19:10:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1952739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quigonejinn/pseuds/quigonejinn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>They send in a specialist.  He is a small, unassuming man.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Better Man

**Author's Note:**

> This is a fic where hideous things happen to Steve Rogers. In fact, this is 10,000 words of AU scripted by the ugly part of my soul that rolls around in fictional torture, abuse, and degradation like a wild dog rolls around in a rotting wildebeest corpse. 
> 
> I'm exaggerating a little, but not much.
> 
> If you do not want to read about sexual abuse, this is not the fic for you. If you are filtering for specific triggers beyond noncon and violence, this is not the fic for you. If certain sexual acts squick you, and you are trying to avoid being squicked, this is not the fic for you. 
> 
> All of the sex in this is nonconsensual. 90% of this was written after the trailers for CA2 started coming out, but before the actual movie release, so there ain't nothing in here from that movie.

Hold still. Hold completely still. Don't push. Don't move. Don't squirm. Don't give them the satisfaction of seeing what this means for you -- breathe out. Breathe in. 

...

You wake on your back in a comfortable room, and a pretty girl in a uniform tells you that you're in New York City. You point out you recognize the baseball game on the radio from May 1941, and you ask again. Where are you? When she won't give you an answer, you shove past her and the guards that materialize -- they aren't in uniforms that you recognize, and they have guns. Surprisingly, they are as fast as you, but you have the advantage of surprise: a part of you registers that you get away because they aren't expecting you to be as fast as them.

You leap. You run out the door. 

You go through the city in bare feet and a tan trousers and white t-shirt, noticing buildings and street signs that almost seem familiar, but aren't quite. Eventually, they box you in a bright place that you almost, but don't quite recognize. Something about the geography tickles at the back of your head, but you can't quite put it together. You also don't have time: out of one of the cars comes a tall Negro man, bald, with a patch over one eye and a leather coat. He stays out of arm's reach, and you regret the fact that you did not have a chance to find a weapon during your run. 

He considers you. You consider him and, also, the fifteen or so guards with guns in their hands. 

"We thought it best to break it to you slowly," the man says, and you consider him, shifting your weight. You see him move two fingers of his right hand, but don't pay attention because he doesn't have a weapon in hand: there is a high-pitched whine in your ears that apparently only you can hear, and as you're lunging at him, you feel your body lock up. 

You land hard on the concrete and have to be lifted and put into one of the cars. 

...

Hold still. Hold completely still. Don't push. Don't move. You're on your knees, and you don't give them the satisfaction of seeing that this is still humiliating for you or that it hurts. If they wanted to, they could hold you completely still except for your pulse and lungs, but they chose not to. After all these times, the pain is less than it otherwise would be: still, something in your mind or body betrays you. Your cheeks flush. You flinch and break discipline, so he pulls out of your mouth and backhands you across the face. 

You know that he is watching carefully to see what your response is. Your response will, in fact, be more important than the fact that your teeth scraped him in an unpleasant manner: after a moment of struggle, you raise your head, look him in the eye, and spit in his face. 

He triggers the neural paralyzer embedded in your spine. 

...

Your last memory before this was ice. 1943. You remember storming HYDRA; you remember Peggy with the flamethrower, and you remember kissing Peggy in the back of the car. You remember fighting Red Skull, and you remember pointing the nose of the plane towards the ice. At some point while you were asleep, though, things went wrong. This is not the America that you expected to find after the war: it turns out the paralysis in your body isn't permanent. It wears off after about half an hour, first in your right hand, then up along your arm. You're sitting in an interrogation room. 

The man with the eyepatch sits down across from you. 

"It strikes me that we got off on the wrong foot," he says. 

"What happened while I was in the ice?" you ask and shake your left arm to get feeling back into it. 

He pulls out something that looks like a sheet of glass; by touching his fingers to it, he brings up images as if it were a movie screen. He touches a rectangle at the bottom, and you watch as a blue expands outward from the continental United States. First, Europe, up to a border that you recognize roughly as being halfway through Germany, roughly where you imagine Berlin would be, then southwards and northwards on the North American continent. Peace. Freedom. 

You narrow your eyes. 

"What about people who object to your peace and freedom?" you say. 

"They deal with me." 

"And you use the -- "

"Paralyzer. That's what they call it."

"Doesn't sound like peace and freedom to me." 

You expect him to trigger the high-pitched sound in your head, but he doesn't. He snorts and asks you what kind of stupid-ass peace and freedom it would be if the bad guys didn't have anything to be afraid of: they don't mind talking to you, apparently, or you arguing back. They're happy to give you whatever reading material you want, up to a point. You ask for material about the means used to preserve the American empire, and they give you a copy of the Constitution. By and large, it looks the way that you remember it looking. There is an amendment limiting the number of times that somebody can be elected president; there is another amendment giving Washington DC an electoral vote. Eighteen year olds can vote. Where is the amendment giving America the right to enslave the half of the globe that the Soviets don't control? 

They send a woman who says that she has a doctorate in political science from Princeton. She is tall, brown-haired, and the two of you go around and around about whether the empire is for the greater good or not. You ask how the greater good can be served by a government that rules without the consent of anyone but those born to American citizens; she asks what good the old system was. 

In a way, you're surprised by how much leeway they give you to question the system. They don't mind trying to convince you to work for for them: they do mind you trying to escape. After the fourth time you try to escape, they begin to keep you restrained in your quarters -- a collar around your neck fixed to a ring in the wall. The fifth time, when you choke a guard most of the way to death using the chain, steal his weapon and use it to break the chain, then put on his uniform and go up, because your attempts to go down haven't worked so far, you find out that without you knowing it, they've gotten you out of New York City and put you on some kind of ship in the sky. You come to a sliding, scrambling halt a very short way from a very long drop. They trigger the paralyzer; when your legs lock up underneath you, you almost fall off the side of the airship. 

After the fifth time, they start with the torture.

After the eighth time, they send in a specialist. He is a small, unassuming man. 

... 

He lets you out from the box where they keep you in between rounds. It turns out that the neural paralyzer they put in you can cause pain, too, agonizing pain beyond anything you have ever known. They vary it with plain physical work: beatings, shock, cold water, dislocating your arms and hanging you by your elbows from a bar, so that your toes swing over the floor. You begin by trying not to scream, then give up trying not to scream, then come back around to not screaming. Twice, they offer you a chance to go back to your comfortable quarters and give up escape and consider what they are saying. The first time you take them up on the offer, and then try to escape again when you are strong enough. The next time, after they catch you again, you flat-out refuse. 

More beatings. More electrical shock. Cold water splashed on you, then when that produces an effect, they start doing cold water immersion, putting you in a clear cylinder of it and starting the water at your collarbones and slowly adding more in a continuous stream that runs over your face and makes it hard to breathe and steals the warmth from every part of you. 

...

There are times when you think that, even with the serum, you're going to die. 

On the other hand: you recognize, dimly, that they don't do anything that would leave too many marks. No deliberately broken bones. No cutting parts off with scalpels. Why? You don't know, but you do know the box is small enough that you have to kneel, but narrow enough that you can't lie down. Your hands are bound behind you, and the box is largely airtight with a slot in front. They could -- and had -- cut off air to it long enough for you to black out. You've lost track of the number of times you'd passed out and come back awake; you've stopped trying to keep from pissing and shitting yourself, and when he tipped you out from the box, you hadn't been out -- in a long time. You'd taken to reciting the Declaration of Independence to yourself over and over to keep from losing yourself in there. Delirious, you began to think you could hear a radio broadcast. The Dodgers? Red Barber? 

Now, you're lying on the floor, your back spasming, mostly blinded by the sudden light, you see a pair of dress shoes. 

"My name is Coulson," a voice from above says. 

You make a noise. Your throat is dry; you can't remember the last time you had something to drink, and Coulson squats down next to you and gently sits you upagainst the wall. He has a pen in his suit pocket, and you think about whether you can get your right hand up fast enough to use it as a weapon. You realize you can't even lift your arm; every part of you is trembling, and you start to dry heave because the lights in the room are so bright. 

When you're done dry heaving, Coulson gives you some water to drink. In fact, he crouches next to you, puts a straw in what looks like a bag, and brings the straw to your lips. You drink. It's a little sweet. A little salty. 

"Electrolytes and salts to replace what you lost," he says. 

"Coulson," you say. Talking hurts your throat, and without meaning to, you turn towards his hand that holds the bag of water and the straw. 

"Not yet," Coulson says. "Drink too much, and you won't keep it down."

You breathe out and let your head rest back against the wall. 

"Is Coulson your first name or last?" you ask. 

"Last." 

"You going to pick up where the last guy left off?" 

"We're going to take a break from that," he says. You know you must smell -- sweat, piss, shit, blood, whatever else your body is caked with -- but he doesn't seem to notice it.

Now that your vision has adjusted to the light, you can see his face. He looks kind. Friendly. You know not to trust these things, though, and you swallow. Your throat is raw and hurts, and you are so, so thirsty. Every part of your body is shaking, and you don't know why. You make yourself stop looking at the water, tear your eyes away from it because you know that what Coulson says is true about you not being able to keep it down if you drink too fast. 

Coulson makes an approving noise. He sets it off to the side, out of reach of your trembling arms and hands and body, and then he looks at you, cool, calm, almost kind. 

"Did you know that you're a hero?" he says. "My history textbook in first grade had a picture of you. After that, I dressed up in your uniform every Halloween until I was too old to go trick-or-treating -- every year, my mom used to ask if I wanted to be something else. Every year I said no."

Coulson puts his hand on your bare shoulder: they stripped you before putting you into the box, and Coulson steadies you against the wall because you're shaking too hard to be able to hold yourself still. 

"I'm going to teach you obedience, Captain," he says and takes his hand away from where your neck where it joins the shoulder. 

...

Hold -- 

...

Hold sti -- 

...

Here is how Coulson begins: small things, small losses for you, small victories for him that pile together. For example, they transport you to a new room. Your new home, Coulson explains. There are no windows. There is no real furniture. The floor is tile; the walls are metal. There is a toilet with no water in it and no tank. A large metal shelf with a pad on it. There is no blanket. You learn that is supposed to be your bed. 

The room does not have a sink, but in the corner, there is a drain on the floor. Coulson shows you how, when he touches the wall, a shower head comes out on a flexible length of tube. When you touch the wall in the same place, there is no reaction. 

You are caked in filth, and Coulson wants you to ask to shower. 

You refuse to, so he uses the paralyzer and does it anyways, putting you on your knees and washing you thoroughly, almost gently. 

...

Coulson wants you to learn that you don't eat or drink unless it comes from his hand. Equally, he wants you to learn that if he offers it to you, you will take it. If you lunge for food or drink, he paralyzes you and sets you back on your heels and makes you wait until he gives a command. If you close your mouth to him, he activates the paralyzer, pries your mouth open, dips his fingers in liquid food concentrate, and puts it on your tongue. He holds you there for another minute or two minute, until your mouth is wet and drooling, then releases the paralyzer. Your teeth instinctively click shut; your body instinctively swallows. 

If he has to, Coulson will feed you an entire meal with his fingers and the paralyzer. He does, in fact. Several meals. Meal after meal. Bite after bite. Mouthful after mouthful of water, until the world swims in and out of focus, then blacks out entirely from the paralyzer: the black-outs mean that your internal clock doesn't work, and the room has no windows. The walls are soundproofed, and there is the hum of the overhead lights that turn on thirty seconds or so before he arrives and turn out thirty seconds after he leaves: when they go out, you're in complete darkness and will be until he comes for you again. 

Is it possible to keep track of time? The only face you see is his The only voice you hear is his and, occasionally yours, trying to be defiant. 

Defiance makes a difference up to the -- 

...

Lying on the floor afterwards, watching your arms up to the elbow shake uncontrollably, you correct yourself. 

Defiance makes a difference. He controls what you see, what you eat, what you hear, when you wash yourself, what you do with your mouth and hands, but your mind is your own. Your will is your own. 

Defiance. Will. Discipline. 

...

Hold still. Hold completely still. Don't -- `

...

One dark period, you dream about Bucky and Brooklyn. You are in your old body; it's the old Greenpoint smokestacks on the skyline, Bucky is wearing this second-hand plum-colored merino suit matching hat that he was so proud of. Plum colored? It's definitely purple, and you're of the opinion that it looks ridiculous on him. He tells you the girls like it. The two of you are standing in the street outside a diner; neon is flickering above your right shoulder, and smiling and confident, Bucky swings around the banister to jog up the three steps to the door. There is a pretty waitress he wants to see him in this. 

Everything about that memory is so vivid that you wake, trembling, in the dark room. 

Defiance. Will. Discipline. 

_Memory_.  
...

Coulson triggers the paralyzer with a small device he keeps around his wrist on a loop. It's flat, smooth, and gray: it looks like a pebble, lit from within by some kind of blue light, and he shows you that it's keyed to his biological signature. While you're paralyzed and being held in a kneeling position on the floor, he brings the fingers of your right hand up and touches them to the paralyzer trigger; you can't move your head, but he wants you to see that your touch has no effect on it. You can't turn it against him; it can only be used as a weapon against you. 

"It responds to me," Coulson says. "If I move my fingers like this over it, the intensity goes up. The difference between pain and holding you still is just a matter of degree." 

He moves two fingers over the surface, and you see the color of light from inside the stone shift. You feel it, too. At this level, it's an ache in your bones; at higher levels, it feels like your nerves are on fire. You try to moan, but none of your muscles work. You struggle to breathe, and the combination of pain and terror reminds you of asthma in another time, in another body. You try to keep your mind from thinking about it: Coulson knows about it, you'd guess. He is probably trying to recreate the feeling, and then, Coulson comes up close to you. 

He presses against the back of your jaw, so that your mouth opens. He puts two fingers into your mouth: the index and middle finger of his left hand, deep enough that the back of your throat starts, involuntary, to gag. The rest of your body is in the grip of the paralyzer, though, so it doesn't follow. You are stuck at that initial moment of choking, over and over, and Coulson doesn't take his fingers out a little to give you a chance to readjust.

Instead, he -- 

...

Instead, with his other hand, he dials up the paralyzer. 

The pain is so intense that you forget the fingers in your mouth: you forget that you're choking. 

...

Terror, blinding pain, humiliation, Coulson's fingers in your mouth: you lose track of time.  
You don't know how long he keeps you there, but you know that he takes his hand out and cuts the paralyzer off abruptly, so you flop to the floor, unable to stay upright. Your body trying to suck air in lungfuls at the same time as it dry heaves, and your mind is -- a mess. Words don't mean anything; you can't hear anything but the high-pitched humming that happens when you've been kept on the paralyzer for some time. 

It takes Coulson a few times to make you understand what he means. He doesn't want to use his hands: he wants you to understand and obey, but his face swims in and out of focus. 

Finally, lying naked on the floor and shaking, the shapes he makes with his mouth match up to sound that you hear. 

"Back on your knees," he says. 

Out of the corner, you see the fingers of his left hand, wet up to where they meet the palm of his hand with spit from your mouth. In his right hand, he has the paralyzer. 

Later, in lucid moments, you remember that this is the first time you refused to do something out of fear, rather than defiance. 

Defiance. Will. And -- 

...

Fear is the point. Coulson sees it on your face and approves of it. In fact, he adjusts to take advantage of it: he gives up on trying to make you get on your knees of your own free will. Instead, he hits the paralyzer again, puts you back on your knees, and repeats the process from before, but with three fingers. He releases the paralyzer; you slump to the floor, shaking uncontrollably. He puts the paralyzer on, and he puts you on your knees. Then, he puts four fingers in your mouth. You know that his palm is wider than your tongue, but your brain only notes the fact. The rest of you is too busy trying to deal with the combination of agonizing pain without a way to express it: the fourth time he puts you back on your knees, he doesn't need to put anything in your mouth. He doesn't put the paralyzer onto a pain setting, but he does use it to hold you in place. 

Eventually, he tilts your head back and watches tears roll, one after the other, down your cheeks and over your neck and shoulders before running out over your chest. You aren't intending to cry, but there your tears are anyways. 

"Are you thinking about Brooklyn, Steve?" Coulson asks, softly, sitting on the bed built into the wall across from you. 

He leans forward. "Ebbets Field in May?" 

...

The next time he comes into the room and the lights comes up, you are determined to hold the line, but before you know it, your shoulder twitches away from his hand. 

"Progress," Coulson says, sounding pleased. 

The next dark period, you make yourself do an extra two hundred and fifty push-ups, even though you know that on the limited diet Coulson is feeding you, mouthful by mouthful from his palm, you will be hungry for a long, long time: two hundred fifty pushups, a hundred and fifty lunges. There is an air vent sent high in the ceiling; you've tested it, and it's fused to the wall. No chance of escape that way, but the slits in the ventilation cover are just large enough for you to stick your fingers into, so that you can, agonizingly, pull yourself up and then let yourself down. You might as well use the security of your cell to your benefit. 

Over and over, in the dark, breathing hard, your fingertips going numb, you repeat to yourself: _My name is Steve Rogers, and I am a good man. I am Captain America._

...

Hold still. Hold completely still. Don't push. If you don't squirm, it'll take Coulson longer to realize that the paralyzer is wearing off. Don't give him the satisfaction of seeing that this is still difficult for you to have his fingers in your mouth -- breathe out. Breathe in, then feel the hum in your bones that means Coulson has triggered the paralyzer again. The way it takes your body is familiar now: straight down your back, then into your limbs. 

While under the paralyzer, it's easier to breathe through the mouth, so you let yourself do that. The world swims in and out, though less than it would have been if Coulson were using the higher cycles: from fingers in your mouth, Coulson transitions you to holding small objects in your mouth. A ballpoint pen. A napkin. You realize these are the first things you've seen in a long time that aren't Coulson or the paralyzer trigger, and when Coulson is satisfied that you will hold them even without the paralyzer on, he begins to teach you to hold his fingers in your mouth without the paralyzer. 

Coulson's touch makes you flinch: he considers each time you flinch a victory, and he teaches you to hold still while he puts his dick in your mouth. You try to flinch from that, and he locks you in place and keeps on going, slow, steady, methodical. 

_I am a good man._

...

One time, while you are on your knees, you scrape him in an unpleasant way with your teeth, and he backhands you. He watches to see what your reaction will be; you know your reaction will be more important than the fact that you accidentally touched the teeth on the left side of your mouth to his dick. After a moment of slow breathing, after a moment of consideration, you look him in the eye, then spit in his face. 

Coulson triggers the paralyzer and applies pain. Eventually, the world goes black, and you wake to Coulson breaking a sharp-smelling capsule under your nose. 

"We'll start again," he says. 

You watch him take three steps back. You watch him zip up his pants and re-does his belt. 

You're lying on the floor, trembling. Coulson waits patiently. 

"Are you going to spit at me again?" he asks. 

Instead, you are sick all over yourself. 

This, as far as Coulson is concerned, counts as a victory for him. He is, after all, a specialist. 

...

You realize that Coulson doesn't intend to break you. This is not the idea: instead, he wants to bend you to shape. What he knows coming into training, and what you slowly realize, is that the super-soldier serum is both your ally and your enemy. 

On the one hand, it lets you withstand incredible punishment. Shock, cold water, dislocating your arms and hanging you by your elbows from a bar, so that your toes swing over the floor. You lasted, you know, longer than most men would. Some of the things they did would have killed a man who didn't have the serum running through him. Some of the things that Coulson does to you now might kill you. 

One time, Coulson holds you under the paralyzer for -- for a long time. You lose track of time; he sits down on the bench meant to be your bed and begins reading a file that he brought with him. Your next memory has you lying on the floor with Coulson checking your breathing and making sure your heart had resumed beating: a temporary interruption, Coulson says. He touches his palm to your chest, tilts his head a little to the side and waits a moment, as if listening to something you can't hear. Then, he goes back to reading. 

On the other hand, what you have is the super-soldier serum. Soldiers are meant to be trained, and if you spend hours on your knees holding an object in your mouth, your body recognizes that as a normal, acceptable state. If Coulson puts you on your knees whenever he comes into the room, your legs start to go out from under you when the lights flick on. You still remember coming out of the serum chamber unsteady on your legs, but being able to chase down a car fifteen minutes later. Your body learns what your mind expects of it, and despite yourself, Coulson is shaping what you recognize as the day-in, day-out experience of your life. 

_Consistency_ , Coulson says, two wet fingers against your face, tapping to let you know he wants you to use your tongue on his dick. 

...

Coulson wants to remake your mind. To fight him, you cling to every memory that you have of life before this. 

...

Your mother, since you never saw your father. Peggy, your best girl. Bucky. The Howling Commandos. Morita with his dry sense of humor. Jones, with his ability to recite, with equal fluency, lines from plays of the French Enlightenment and dirty songs sung by prostitutes in brothels after the Nazi officers had left. 

...

At one point, you are lying on your side in a corner of the room. Somewhere between sleeping and being awake, you slip into the woods at the SSR base outside London. Training grounds, and you can't remember why the Howling Commandos or Bucky aren't there, but you can smell the trees, and you can smell the leaves. It's going to rain -- Peggy makes a joke about summer weather in England, then goes back to talking scheduling for the Norwegian operation. Two weeks later, a night without a moon, and you're thinking along with her when you you look up, realizing what had been throwing you. Her voice is coming up from higher than it normally does. 

There is a tree trunk on the ground. Peggy is walking on it, heel to toe, frowning a little in concentration while she talks about how difficult it has been to get accurate tide schedules. She is wearing her uniform; a piece of hair fell out of her chignon and curls behind one ear. The trees trees are green and close out the sky overhead; you can hear a rustle as the rain hits the edge of the forest. You say something about the topographic map showing a sheltered inlet three miles north of the landing beach discussed in the meeting, and Peggy frowns, says that she thought MapOps had eliminated that -- 

You wake with the feel of the forest in your mouth and nose. You can smell the ferns; you can feel the wind that comes ahead of a rain shower, and you feel amazingly close to Peggy: words about Norway are on your tongue, and if only you could somehow stretch your arm out far enough, you could touch her hand. 

Then, you realize that the lights are on. 

Then, you see Coulson's shoes in front of you, shined, the laces neatly tied. The bottom of his trousers brush the top of his shoes. How long has Coulson been standing like that in front of you?

How long has it been since you've worn anything or slept in a real bed?

"Are you going to spit at me again?" Coulson asks. 

Without intending to be, without realizing until the stuff is hot and sickeningly acidic on your tongue, you are suddenly and violently sick. 

...

"You'll learn, Captain," he says. "You may not feel like it, but you're learning." 

It's a relief to your body to eat. It's a relief to your body to drink. You know Coulson wants your mind and heart to be relieved and grateful when Coulson lets the paralyzer wear off before he leaves, so that you don't have to kneel in the darkness, frozen, every particle of your body convinced that you are back in the ice. 

Coulson sprays you down with water, then releases the paralyzer, so that you slump to the floor, wet, cold, shaking so hard that your bones feel like they'll come out of your skin. You teeth clatter together; you try to breathe, but find that you're shaking too hard. The fear and panic and lack of oxygen and after effects of having been held so long and hard under the paralyzer mix so that you lose consciousness again: on the one hand, you don't go back over to Coulson on your hands and knees, like he wants you to, unzip his pants with your teeth, undo his belt, ask for permission to take his dick back into your mouth. 

On the other hand, you don't spit at him, and when you wake, you're on your knees and Coulson is inside your mouth, fucking you, slow and steady. He is the only thing you can see; his body is the only thing you can smell, and since he come straight down your throat, you don't have choice in whether or not to swallow. 

Coulson, you know, considers this to be another small victory. 

...

There is no way for you to keep track of actual time as it passes in the real world. 

Instead, for while you try to keep track inside your head alone of how many times Coulson comes to -- you have difficulty applying the word to yourself, because in your frame of reference, it is a disgusting, vile thing done by some men to women, but in the end, you acknowledge what this is. After the initial flush of shame, you force yourself to say the words, even if you can only say them in your head: after all, there has always been a part of your mind that recognizes the facts of what Coulson is doing, no matter what name he gives it. _Obedience_. _Training._

You count the times when he comes into your cell and puts his dick in your mouth; you count the times when he comes into your cell and doesn't touch you, just triggers the paralyzer, either on the holding setting or any of the pain settings and stands there, watching you not-writhe on the ground, then presents his shoe for you to kiss. Do you kiss it? What are the consequences if you don't? He just puts you under the paralyzer and brings your mouth down to his shoe anyways. 

So you count that, too. You count the times he slides his fingers into your mouth, then rolls you onto your back and touches your chest, shoulders, up the insides of your thighs, all the way up to where they join the main part of your body. He taught your body to flinch from him; he is teaching it to hold still underneath his hand, and you lie under his palm, repeating your words to yourself, visualizing the number. 

If you lose count, if you forget, you don't blame yourself. It happens. It isn't your fault. Instead, you start again at one: this is your own victory against him. 

So: for a while, you keep track, inside your head, of how many times Coulson comes to rape you. 

...

 _I am a good man_ , you say to yourself while you are on your knees, his dick in your mouth, your nose full of the smell of his crotch and his pubic hair tickling your face. The zipper on his pants catches you in the throat, and you move your head up and down, because if you don't, he'll put the paralyzer on you and fuck your throat. That feels like drowning and strangling and pain and fear and an asthma attack and -- 

You can see his belt stretching away at the left and right of your peripheral vision, and for a moment, you're distracted: you think about how satisfying it would be to pull it out of his pants and choke him to death with it. You can almost feel the edge of the leather in your hands. 

The fantasy is distracting, and you, so he pulls out, backhands you across the face. Your lower lip starts to throb, and without using the paralyzer, he holds you at arms length, on your knees, until he goes soft. Then, he brings your mouth back to him. 

You have to start over. 

...

In the darkness between when he comes to rape you, you think about Bucky on the steps of a Brooklyn diner. You dream about sitting with the Howling Commandos around a campfire in a burned-out farmhouse in northern Italy. You dream about Peggy in the English woods at the height of summer, hair curling around her ears, smiling at you, and when you wake, every muscle in your body aches to be standing next to her, feeling her smile on you. 

Why are there tears on --

...

You try to escape. 

The next time Coulson comes through the door, you try for the first time in a long, long time. You've been watching; you've been thinking. The room offers you little, so you rely on speed and surprise. You wedge your fingers into the door a fraction of a moment before it slams shut behind Coulson. It only takes three long strides for you to cross the room. You force your way through with pure force, then realize, with an intensity that feels like you've run into a wall, that it's a double door. In order to get through to the other side and into the hallway, you would have to be buzzed through. 

You turn, but the door has closed behind you. You're trapped. 

They trigger the paralyzer anyway, just to be sure. 

...

Coulson keeps you under the paralyzer. Coulson shows you where he is going to set the pain, and a bubble of fear goes up your throat. It preemptively chokes you; it rises up your throat and bursts in your mouth. You make a gurgling noise; you manage to sway a little to the left, raise your right hand a quarter of an aching, straining inch. 

Coulson looks you full in the face. He looks cool. A little distracted. 

A little impressed. Then, the world goes black. 

...

If Coulson can teach you to suck his dick, Coulson can teach you to do a lot of things. 

...

He is holding a bar as long as your shoulders are broad, but made out of metal. There are loops on the ends, and he holds it in front of you, letting you see what he is about to put on you. You probably don't need it because the paralyzer is still on you, in you, making the breath in your nose and mouth feel thick. 

"This is called a spreader bar," he says. 

...

For a while, you count how many times Coulson rapes you, but somewhere in the fuzz that happens after you try to escape and Coulson uses the paralyzer on you so hard, so long that you lose consciousness -- you forget the number, and for several light and dark cycles after that, you struggle to hold words. Your head buzzes; your mouth and teeth feel strange. Even when Coulson wants you to answer him back, parts of your face won't cooperate. 

Coulson explains, again, that the thing on your knees is a spreader bar. 

This, he explains, is lubricant. This is a latex glove. A kind of rubber. They had it in your time, and he puts the glove on his right hand and settles his left hand on your bare hip. You still don't entirely understand what is happening or why you're cuffed and on your knees when he touches your ass and it's cold. The paralyzer is on you, and Coulson tells you what you're going to be accepting his hand your ass. The fingers of his hand, one at a time, until your ass is as easy and loose as your mouth. Then, he'll start fucking that part of you with his dick. 

_Think about it, Steve,_ he says. _Do you want to stay in here? Do you want this in you?_

He brings his gloved right in front your face, so that you can see how big his hands are. He says that, with practice, he'll be able to put his whole hand inside you. 

_Do you want to stay here that long, Steve?_

He makes a fist. 

...

Somehow, somewhere along the line, you stop counting how many times Coulson rapes you. Will you count each finger as a separate rape? What about the first time he manages to get his whole hand inside you, all five fingers, he says, and you're stretched and in pain, but not as much pain as you would have been because he is careful and uses lubricant because he wants to leave you intact, because doesn't intend to hurt you more than he needs to obtain obedience. 

...

Despite the lights, despite your fear and revulsion, after the first time Coulson puts all of his hand in you and is able to make a fist, then pulls it out, then has you kiss his shoes, first left, then right, before he lets you crawl over to the shower area and wash yourself off and you're shaking and shaking and shaking and don't know why -- you fall asleep. 

You dream about Brooklyn. You dream about Bucky, about Peggy, about the smell of Dugan's foul cigars and the way that their smoke seemed to feel greasy. You're in a memory of listening to Falsworth and Dugan fight with each other about their smell when Coulson comes back. Bucky is sitting in his bunk, out of their squabble, with one leg tucked against his chest and another stretched forward, so that his heel hangs off the edge of the bed. Back home, did he sit like that? There are smudges under his eyes that look like bruises, and you remember swinging back to Falsworth and Dugan and telling them to leave it on the battlefield, but Dugan, take your fucking cigar outside before somebody was ill on the floor. Everyone laughed, Dugan grinned, a little embarrassed, and you remember stepping out into the cold, clear, starlit night and standing next to Dugan while he smoked one of those filthy things. 

...

The lights come on. Coulson comes in, suit and shoes that you recognize, that you are uncomfortably familiar with. This time, though, there is someone else with him. A man. Also in a suit and shoes. After however many -- weeks, months, _years_ with only your voice and Coulson's, having someone else in the room feels strange. His eyes makes your skin prickle, and while you're lying on your side on the bed, holding very still so that nobody will misinterpret anything you do as aggressive, trying to anticipate what Coulson is going to do -- Coulson tells you that you're going to wear the spreader bar. 

"Down," he says. 

Your head jerks up, and for the first time in a long while, you look Coulson in the face. He looks tired, a little irritated, but not with you. 

The man with him is roughly his height, dark-haired. Maybe a little taller than Coulson. Suit. Shoes. Strange blue light in his chest. 

...

Flushed with anger, you slide off the bed, onto your knees while Coulson takes his coat off and sets it to the side. 

When Coulson touches your back, you lift one knee, then the other, so that he can fit the bar on you. He checks the straps to make sure they're secure. You hear the snap of the glove go on Coulson's hand, and you bury your face against the sleeping pad that is still warm with your body heat: because the pad retains body heat, it's the only place in the room where you can get and stay warm. Coulson keeps the temperature turned down low, and you're naked at all times. The floors are tile. The walls are steel. As a result, most of the time when he comes into the room, Coulson finds you curled up on the bed, trying to conserve warmth. He doesn't mind. Regards it as a sign that he has correctly aligned the incentives. 

In the beginning, you slept on the floor, but one night, cold, dripping wet from being hosed down without being dried, you used your hands and memory to find the pad. You lay down on it. 

...

 _Not a perfect soldier,_ Erskine said to you in another lifetime. _But a good man._

In the end, you're only a man. 

...

You're on the floor, face covered, knees apart. 

"He doesn't like it," the man says, and his voice sounds so _strange_ to you after all this time in isolation. Part of you that wants to sink into how good it feels to hear something besides Coulson's voice and your own thoughts and the whirr of the temperature control and air circulator: you fight that part. 

In response to what the man says, though, Coulson makes a noise. Irritated. He doesn't like this man, you think, and the guess is confirmed when you hear Coulson's voice, audibly irritated. "No." 

Coulson's irritation makes you anxious in a way that you don't want to feel, but it doesn't seem to bother the man. "Does he get aroused?"

"No."

"Ever?" 

"No." 

"Have you tried?"

"It isn't part of the program." 

"There are ways to do it, you know. Even if he isn't into men. It's the 21st century." 

Coulson doesn't believe that is worth an answer; he has a glove on, and he keeps working two fingers in and out of you. Before too long, he adds a third. 

...

"Do you get aroused?"

"Only when I need to be." 

The man makes a noise of disbelief. You are still on your knees, face pressed against the pad you sleep on. The parts you touch with your face and your mouth are warm, but the rest of the pad has cooled.

"Tell him to spread his hole," the man says. 

"Do it," Coulson tells you, and awkwardly, you reach around with your right hand and pull at your ass. Coulson has three fingers inside you, and he keeps them still for a moment so that you can concentrate on getting a good grip. Your ass is slippery with lubricant; Coulson's hand doesn't actually hurt, but it's there, and it's hard remembering not to tighten around him. 

"Come on, Steve," the man says, like it's a joke. LIke the two of you are friends. "Both hands. Nice and wide."

You hear something that sounds like a camera shutter, even though you didn't see a camera on him when he came in, and without meaning to, you tighten up around Coulson's fingers. Normally, this means you end up on the floor, gasping underneath a pain setting on the paralyzer, but that isn't the plan today, apparently. 

"Put four in there, Coulson."

Coulson doesn't like this man and isn't afraid to show it, but stops short of disobedience. 

...

Eventually, the man gets bored of watching from the sidelines, and he sits down on the bed. Coulson makes a noise of distaste and starts to pull his fingers out of you for good, but the man says, like it's a joke, _Five for the Captain, Agent Coulson,_

You make a noise in your throat, part fear, part pain; without taking his eyes from your face, the man undoes his belt. 

The blue light in his chest -- 

...

Afterwards, you are alone in the dark for a while, shaking, covered in drying lubricant and worse. 

Coulson leaves with him, but comes back, and when he does, he is surprisingly gentle with you. In the shower, your hands are trembling too hard to hold the attachment that delivers water to your body, so he takes off his shoes and socks and steps close bathe you. His sleeves are already rolled up, and he hasn't done this in a long time. He washes your ass out, fingers gentle and pushing only a little into you, just enough to clean out the lube close to the opening. The water is pleasantly warm; there is even a towel. Two. One for your body, one for your hair, which he rubs most of the way dry. 

Afterwards, you're still trembling a little, but it's nothing like the cold that you usually feel. He sits down on your bed. You're kneeling on the tile floor in front of him. 

"His father used to talk about you," Coulson says. "He admired you. The two of you worked with him during the war. Do you remember Howard Stark? That was his son, Tony." 

You stare at Coulson for a long moment, trying to decide if he is lying or joking or trying to put his fingers into your brain, but his expression doesn't change, and still on your knees because he hasn't given the command letting you use your feet-- you stagger away and vomit on the floor. 

Mixed into the bile you throw up, somewhere in there, you think, is Tony Stark's come and piss. 

...

Coulson doesn't punish you for throwing up either of those things. In fact, he even hoses the floor down. Even feeds you afterwards to replace the calories you've burned. 

...

You have such vivid memories of being Steve Rogers. 

You have such vivid memories of being Captain America. 

...

In fact, Coulson tells you that you were Captain America, and you can be again. All you have to do is agree to cooperate outside the room. You can have a normal life. You can have an apartment. Sleep in a bed. Eat real food. Have a life without his hands on and inside you. 

"Until I stepped out of line," you say.

"Better what you have now," he answers. 

His face is kind, filled with something that almost looks like -- 

...

You remember something he said to you -- it feels years ago, but you have no way of knowing. 

_Did you know that you're a hero? My history textbook in first grade had a picture of you._

This is closest you come to breaking completely, Steve Rogers.

...

In the moment, your mouth is bitter from vomit. Your body is sore, and you have been kneeling on the floor so often, so frequently for Coulson, that there is part of you that accepts this is the normal state of things. There is a part of you that understands you spread your legs and held your ass apart for Coulson to put all the fingers of his right hand into you, and when Tony Stark put his dick in your mouth, you failed to bite down or fight him because all of your being was focused on staying loose around the fingers that Coulson had in your ass. Then, afterwards, when he came, he pissed on your face and wiped his dick dry in your hair. 

You took all of those things, and even now, after being washed off, you still smell a little like piss and come and lube. Your ass hurts now, but while he was washing you, Coulson easily slipped two fingers into you. Cleaned lubricant out of you. 

What kind of man are you? 

Now, Coulson is offering you way out. You are tired. You are exhausted. Your stomach is working on the food in your stomach, and slow warmth is filling your body. 

You are so, so tired, Steve Rogers. 

...

"Better what you have now," Coulson says. 

It's true, and for a moment, you consider it: how good it would be to wear clothes and be warm all the time and not just after Coulson has fed you. How good it would be to stand when Coulson was in the room. What it would be like to see other people besides him, so that some part of you wouldn't respond with gladness at hearing another human's voice, even if you guessed, from the moment he stepped into the room, that it was likely to end with you being raped on the floor. Even when he was touching your face, putting his dick in your mouth, there was a part of you that was glad for the relief from boredom. 

You have been in this plain, featureless room for a long time, but the moment passes. Coulson sees it on your face. 

He sighs. 

...

How did the world change while you were in the ice? It seems impossible that you should have put a plane into arctic waters, destroying Red Skull and assuring Allied victory in the war, and woken to this. 

By one way of thinking, it didn't. HYDRA was an enemy, but never the only bully in the room. Most humans, in fact, have more than a little bully in them. 

...

Coulson wants to make sure you know what you're turning down. He talks to you about it as though talking about facts from a history book. George Washington crossed the Delaware. Lincoln freed the slaves. You destroyed the Red Skull, but you look at the year-on-year expansion maps of the empire, and you understand that something just as bad as HYDRA spread through the American dream. 

"You aren't surprised, Captain." 

Some part of you wants to ask Coulson what, exactly, he thinks that he has been doing to you for the past -- however long it has been. 

"You don't cooperate with me, Captain, they'll wipe you and give you to him. You know what a wipe is? Stark is a monster." 

You let anger show on your face. 

Frustrated, Coulson trips the paralyzer. On his way out, he tells you. Think about it: you were ready to die, willing to lay down your life, and you achieved, physically, everything you wanted. And yet, the America has become -- 

Why assume that you could have stopped it? 

...

Coulson shows you a textbook for first graders -- not the one he grew up with, not the one where he first saw your picture, but close enough. You lie on your side, your arms and legs stiff with the paralyzer. You are just barely able to breathe, and you watch him turn the pages. 

...

Coulson did not want you to meet Tony Stark, but as he explains it, his superiors are running out of patience. Consequently, you are running out time. 

Beyond that, too, you realize that Coulson is angry. He can feel all of his careful, sustained, professional work slipping away from him: the two of you go back to basics. Beatings, shock, cold water, dislocating your arms and hanging you by your elbows from a bar, which has all happened to you before, but this time, Coulson either does it personally this time or stands there, arms over his chest, and watching third parties do it to you. 

He starves you. He keeps you from drinking water for what feels like days, then lets you drink half a glass of the stuff with electrolytes and sugar and salt, just enough to remind your body that it is brutally thirsty. 

If you ask for it, you can have the rest of the glass. You look Coulson, then to the glass in his hand. 

You ask for it, but refuse to hit the guard presented to you. 

...

Before, when you refused to eat or drink or wash yourself or fuck, Coulson would lock you with the paralyzer, then do what he wanted. At that point, he was trying to show you that he had control of your body, that physical submission was inevitable. Now, it has become clear that physical submission is one thing. Control over your mind is another. He still has the paralyzer, but you've gained an advantage: an old enemy to fight. 

Coulson shows you what looks like a piece of paper on wax backing. It's two inches on each side, and after giving you a good long while to consider it, he peels the wax backing off and sticks it to the top of your left arm. 

He leaves. 

People -- two, four, five -- more people you've seen in a very long time, come in. 

...

The patch, as Coulson explains it, just before putting the patch on you, delivers a cocktail of aphrodisiacs. The width of the patch is roughly proportional to intensity of response. The length corresponds to the length of response -- even with your enhanced metabolism, a four-inch square will be enough to maintain steady delivery to your bloodstream, and the practical effect of this that when the people come, you try to think of Peggy, of your mother, of Bucky, of everyone you have ever loved or loved you, of all the people you have tried to help in your life -- 

There are two women among the people that come in, and one of them notices, pointing out that you respond more to women than to men. 

...

"This is your last chance, Steve. They will give you to Tony Stark. He invented the paralyzer. Stark Industries makes that patch. Do you know what you'll be used for?"

"What happened to Peggy Carter?" 

Coulson doesn't answer.

You follow your question with: "What about the Howling Commandos? Jim Morita? Tim Dugan? Gabe Jones?" 

Coulson's face tightens with regret. He touches your cheek and looks like he will, in fact, actually be sorry to be losing you. 

...

He asks you one just more time. 

Naturally, you refuse. In fact, you try to escape: it's a feeble attempt, but you have, in the dark, found a bit of the metal walls that is a little loose. In the dark, you feel your way over to it and try to pry it loose. You succeed and have just managed to put your hand inside the panel to short some wires when the the lights come on. They trigger the neural paralyzer. 

...

You expect to be beaten, but you aren't.

...

You expect that the next time the door opens, you'll be tortured. You aren't. 

...

In the end --

...

In the end, they give you one more chance. Coulson brings back one of the men that fucked you while you were on the patch. He says that if you hit him, this will all be forgiven. You'll get food. You'll get to go to a real apartment and lie down in a real bed and wear real clothes.

"Stand up, Steve. You miss standing, don't you?"

You stagger up to your feet, and it's true. Your body misses standing. There are handprints on your arms and legs and torso, and the man can't look you in the face, but you look him in the face. You remember his fingers in your mouth; you remember him holding your shoulders down while one of women put your face between her legs. You remember the moment of despair when you realized that you could try and cling to memories of who and what you were while your face was slick with her juice, but that meant thinking of Peggy and -- 

Then you look at Coulson. 

You refuse. 

"This is your last chance, Captain," he says. "Are you sure?"

You think about the last time you visited your mother's grave: all the way out in Cypress Hill. Green hills, trees, a breeze. You brought her a nickel's worth of flowers, then went and took the train to Jersey where you claimed to be Steve from Paramus. 

...

Having used up your last chance, they do not, take you to a separate room. Instead, Coulson cuffs your hands and feeds you a last meal -- a protein bar. He said he couldn't take the risk of uncuffing your hands, but broke off pieces and fed them to you. At least it wasn't liquid concentrate. Instead, it was something you could chew and swallow, something with a little texture in it, and every few bites, Coulson brought the drinking pouch and straw up to your mouth and let you have as much as you wanted. 

When the bar was gone, he washed you, carefully and thoroughly, and dried you with a towel. 

This time, when he goes, not looking behind him, the lights stay on. 

...

You're lying on your side, hungry, but not as hungry as you have been. You're thirsty, but not as thirsty as you have been. You hurt, but it isn't as bad as it was and you aren't under the paralyzer. The lights are on, and you struggle off the floor and manage to heave yourself onto your bed, so that you're at least upright and off the floor when the door opens for the last time: if you had the emotional resources to be surprised at this point, you would be surprised. 

It's a woman, tall, blonde, dressed in a suit. She wears white heels, and you're blinking, trying to make sense of it while she crosses over to you. When she bends down close, you smell expensive perfume. After so long closed away, either held at arm's length or with your face pressed -- the smell goes into your brain. You see her blonde hair and perfect face. She is one of the most beautiful women you've ever seen, in person, in a movie, in a magazine. Anywhere. 

She comes forward, and you hear the click of her heels on the metal floor.

 _Hello, Steve,_ she says.

You don't so much as hear her voice as feel it: every muscle in your body vibrates with it at the same moment. 

Emma Frost touches two fingers to your forehead. 

...

In your last moment as Steve Rogers, you are repeating to yourself, over and over: _a good man._ At the edge of your consciousness, you think of your mother. Bucky. Peggy. The men who trusted you enough to follow you out of a prison camp, then walked with you to fight evil. 

...

In a haze of expensive perfume and blonde hair and Empire diamonds, Emma Frost touches you, and she breathes, briefly, right along with you, the wet mist in a French forest where you and the Howling Commandos fought HYDRA. She feels in her hair, for a moment, the breeze from the cemetery where you buried your mother: she shares a tombstone with your father, whose body never came back from the trenches in Belgium. The sky is blue above. You remember an old fantasy of someday being able to bring Peggy to the spot and introduce her, in a way, to your parents. You remember actually standing there with Bucky.

For a moment, in order to reach inside as deeply inside your head as she needs to, Emma Frost feels all these things and remembers them. 

For one last, precious moment, you do, too. 

It's the last moment you'll ever have with them. 

...

What happens after that? 

Nothing that you remember or feel as Steve Rogers.

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. This fic is, in a lot of ways, a MCU-style homage to [Wilderness by fireofangels](http://archiveofourown.org/works/442752). In fact, you might have noticed that the first words of this are exactly the motherfucking same. If Jacqueline Carey can lift the opening words of Kushiel's Dart from The Persian Boy, I CAN BORROW FROM THE MASTERS, TOO. 
> 
> 2\. The working title of this was "the good guys are all bad and nick fury is worse". 
> 
> 3\. A long time ago, [marmolita](http://archiveofourown.org/users/marmolita) postulated that Steve Rogers was pretty much impossible to break physically. And uh. I took that idea and ran with it up a mountain, across a valley, through an ice field, and to horrifying places that nobody ever wanted to get to. If you made it through this far, congrats. I think. 
> 
> 4\. Yeah, in my mind, this is kinda sorta a continuation of the universe from [A Better World](http://archiveofourown.org/works/688609). Theoretically, there is a third part in the TONY STARK IS A HORRIFYING FUCKER IN THE MIRRORVERSE trilogy, but at the rate of one every fucking eighteen months or so, y'know. Sigh.
> 
> 5\. I am sorry about all the dangling prepositions.


End file.
